Life Compass

Summer Teacher Institute

Register now for the 2025 Summer Teacher Institute

Join us for Montrose School's LifeCompass 2025 Summer Teacher Institute: Leveraging Character Education to Reinvigorate Teaching Race in the U.S.

When:  Thursday-Friday, June 26-27, 2025
Pre-conference Wednesday, June 25
Where:  Montrose School
29 North Street
Medfield, MA 02052
Featured Speakers: Dr. Karen Bohlin
Director, Practical Wisdom Project, Abigail Adams Institute
Research Affiliate, Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University
  Dr. Angel Parham
Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia
Senior Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture

Pre-Conference

Wednesday, June 25
4:00-6:00 PM 

Featured speaker & panel facilitator: Dr. Karen Bohlin 
Panelists: Montrose teacher-practitioners will share their research in diverse areas of character education and reflect on the impact of this research at Montrose School.
Cocktail reception to follow.

Conference day 1

Thursday, June 26
9:00 AM-4:00 PM
Featured speaker & workshop leader: Dr. Angel Adams Parham 
The session includes sharing research and leading workshops for teachers to develop teaching practice and expand curricular materials -- stories, art, history, and community connections.
Tea time & colloquy to follow.

Conference day 2

Friday, June 27
9:00 AM-3:00 PM
Featured speakers include Ken Whitlock, Barbara Whitlock, & Dr. Karen Bohlin
The session includes sharing personal narratives, research and teaching practice.
The session will close with a panelist presentation and opportunities to contribute to a Toolkit to take the work of this conference to broader audiences.

Schedule of Talks and Workshops

List of 3 items.

  • Pre-Conference Wednesday, June 25, 4:00-6:00 PM

    The LifeCompass Institute Lab School: History & Vision
    Impact keynote address by Karen Bohlin

    Dr. Bohlin, Founder and Director Emerita of the LifeCompass Institute and former 18-year Head of Montrose School, will lead the talk and facilitate a panel discussion with current Montrose scholar-practitioners who will share the impact of their study in the Masters of Character Education Program, through the Jubilee Centre for Character & Virtue and in affiliation with the University of Birmingham (UK).

    Cocktail reception to follow.

  • Conference Day 1, Thursday, June 26, 9:00 AM-4:00 PM

    • 8:30 AM Breakfast & coffee
    • Talk: Layered Meanings: Using Literature to Unfold Layers of Experience
      • At its best, literature holds up a mirror to human nature that spurs us to live up to the best of who we can be.   Who, for instance, would want to be among the kinds of gossipers whom Zora Neale Hurston describes as making “burning statements with questions and killing tools out of laughs”?  And who does not feel a gratifying sense of poetic justice when the cruel step sisters get their just desserts as Cinderella triumphs in the Grimm brothers' tale? We will consider ways to read, discuss, and engage with literary works that invite students to thoughtfully inhabit the position of near and distant others while cultivating their own moral imagination. 
      • Teacher workshop session to follow.
    • Talk: Layered Histories: Using Place to Unfold Layers of Historical Experience 
      • A book is one kind of text, and place is another that has much to teach us.  An old house, an unassuming garden, a city block—each holds temporal layers of social and cultural life which, when read well, can uncover complex histories that complement historical study based on books and primary sources.  We enter this method of place-based history through a case study based in New Orleans, and then consider how this can be done in other places.
      • Teacher workshop session to follow.
    • 3:00 PM: Tea & Colloquy: Join us for tea and discussion, using inspiring text to cultivate rich discussion.

  • Conference Day 2: Friday, June 27, 9:00 AM-3:00 PM

    • 8:30 AM Breakfast & coffee
    • Keynote: The Story of a Reluctant Race Pioneer: Navigating the Segregated World of my Youth & the Complexities of School Integration, Kenneth Edward Whitlock, Jr.
    • Talk: Empowering Courageous Dialogue & Invigorating Teaching about Race in the US through Character Education - sharing action research, Barbara Whitlock
      • Teacher workshop session to follow.
    • Talk: Lessons from Langston Hughes on the Schooling of Desire
      • In this interactive workshop, participants will engage with selected poems by Langston Hughes using pedagogies of character and practical wisdom that awaken the moral imagination. Together, we will explore how Hughes’s poetry invites students into formative reflection on what it means to be human in the face of adversity and in the pursuit of dignity, freedom, and hope. Educators and school leaders will leave with practical strategies for using literature to foster courageous dialogue, deepen student agency, and form moral insight—especially in discussions about race and identity.
    • Talk: “What Do You Want, Miggery Sow?” The Socratic Method and Desire in Literature Instruction, Emilie Rogers 
    • Workshop: In conversations about race, we often talk about justice, equity, but we often fail to ask a crucial question: What do we really want when we say we want racial equity? This workshop will guide you through the philosophy and practice of utilizing desire in literature instruction by way of the Socratic Method.
    • Reflection & Discussion 

Featured Speakers

Karen Bohlin

Karen Bohlin is Director of the Practical Wisdom Project at the Abigail Adams Institute and a Research Affiliate at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. Former Head of Montrose School and Senior Scholar at Boston University, she works with educators and leaders to cultivate practical wisdom and moral imagination they need to promote character and flourishing in schools. Founder and Director Emerita of Montrose’s LifeCompass Institute (f. 2017), Dr. Bohlin is a leader in character education and will lend her expertise throughout the conference.

She is the author of Teaching Character Education Through Literature: Awakening the Moral Imagination and has recently contributed chapters to Educating for Character Through the Arts (2023) and Aesthetic Ethics: Toward a Moral Imagination (2025, in press), exploring the role of poetry and visual art in the schooling of desire. Other leading works which she authored or contributed to include Happiness and Virtue: Beyond East & West: Toward a New Global Responsibility (2012), Citizenship & Higher Education (2005), Building Character through Schools (1999), Practical Wisdom for Agile Leadership: Formative Education’s Core DNA (22-23 & 23-24). She is also the author or co-author of “The Practical Wisdom Framework: A Compass for School Leaders” (2022), “Virtue: An Argument Worth Rehearsing” (2014), and two LifeCompass Institute toolkits: "Stress Tests of Character" (with Kris, 2020), and "Courageous Dialogue" (with Whitlock, 2021).

Ken Whitlock

Ken Whitlock is a sought-after speaker and history teacher who grew up in segregated Richmond, VA and was part of the second year of “freedom of choice” integration of public schools at the tail end of Virginia’s “massive resistance” response to the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Supreme Court decision, which banned racial segregation in schools. Ken earned his BA in American Studies from Boston University and his MA in American History from the University of Virginia, and he has had a storied 50-year teaching career, including at public schools in Fairfax County, VA and for the last 39 years as history teacher and Senior Faculty Leader at Middlesex School in Concord, MA.

Emilie Rogers

Emilie Rogers is the Library and Virtue Study Coordinator at Libertas School of Memphis and serves as a contributor to the Libertas' virtue curriculum Acorns to Oaks. Emilie also utilizes Acorns to Oaks' ethical philosophy as the basis of her instruction in Libertas' literacy enrichment program, a program that serves lower elementary students, which aims to cultivate a student's love of reading and a deeper understanding of how to read well. She recently completed her Master's in Character Education at the University of Birmingham UK, focusing on virtue ethics and literary philosophy.

For more information

Contact Barbara Whitlock, program organizer and presenter 
Director of Upper School at Montrose School

Angel Adams Parham

Angel Adams Parham is associate professor of sociology and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. She is passionate about education across the K-16 educational spectrum, and her research and teaching are inspired by classical philosophies of living and learning that emphasize the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.   She has homeschooled her daughters, and is the co-founder and executive director of Nyansa Classical Community, an educational non-profit focused on K-12 students which provides classical and Christian curricula at the lower and upper school levels for schools and homeschools. Parham is the co-author, with Anika Prather, of The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature and she has published articles on the intersection of Black writers and classical liberal education in popular outlets including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Public Discourse, Comment Magazine, The Hedgehog Review, and Common Good Magazine.  

In her scholarly work, Parham is the author of American Routes: Racial Palimpsests and the Transformation of Race (Oxford, 2017), which examines changes in race and racialization in New Orleans under the French, Spanish and Anglo-American administrations. The book was co-winner of the Social Science History Association’s Allan Sharlin Memorial book award (2018); co-winner of the American Sociological Association’s Barrington Moore book award in comparative-historical sociology (2018); and recipient of an Honorable Mention from the Thomas & Znaniecki Best Book Award, International Migration Section, American Sociological Association (2018).  She is currently at work on a book manuscript entitled "Reckoning and Reconciliation: On Race, Place, and Memory in Civic Life" which examines Americans' engagement with difficult, complex histories and the relation of these histories to understanding what it means to be American. Parham completed her B.A. in sociology at Yale University and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

Barbara Whitlock

Barbara Whitlock is the Director of Upper School at Montrose School and English teacher, with a BA in political science and journalism from Rider University and an MA in character education through the University of Birmingham, UK. Publications include “Mentorship Programs in Schools: Bridging the Character Education Gap” (Journal of Moral Education, March 2024) and The Courageous Dialogue Toolkit (with Karen Bohlin, 2021). Barbara has taught at Montrose School for 14 years, in both the English and history departments, as well as at Middlesex School and The Academy of Notre Dame.
An independent school for girls in grades 6-12 guided by the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Montrose School

P: 508-359-2423